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/^C4 G. 



A BRIEF REVIEW 



" FIRST ANNUAL REPORT 



AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY, 



SPEECHES DELIVERED AT THE ANNIVERSARY MEETING, 

MAY 6th, 1834." 
ADDRESSED TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES. 



BY DAVID M. REESE, M. D. 



OP NEW YOKK. 



S mto ¥oi-ft: 



PUBLISHED BY HOWE & BATES, 
BOOKSELLERS ANB STATIONERS, 

68i Chatham-street. 

1834. 



."•> .^^x 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in August, 1834, by David M. Reese, ic 
the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the. Southern District of New York. 



PREFACE 



In the preparation of the present pamphlet, it will be perceived that 
,the author has confined his criticisms to the contents of the First An- 
nual Report of the Anti-slavery Society, and the addresses accompa- 
nying it. This course was deemed the most appropriate at present, 
although he is thereby prevented from introducing much collateral 
testimony, on the several topics introduced ; and also, has to deny him- 
self, from attempting such a vindication of the American Colonization 
Society, as that noble institution merits, As however the friends of 
" immediate abolition," profess to regard the American Anti-slavery 
Society as a rival institution, if he has succeeded in convicting this, 
their first oflicial manifesto, of the political heresies, and moral obli- 
quities, of which he accuses its authors; it need not be a subject of 
regret, that the specific character and high claims of the Colonization 
scheme, be, for the present, left to their own intrinsic evidence, or trans- 
ferred to other and abler hands. 

Although it is understood, that the pamphlet of which this is a brief 
review, has been extensively and gratuitously circulated, yet it is pos- 
sible, that the present notice of it, may fall into the hands of some, who 
have never seen that publication. To such the author would say, that 
t)ie few cjuotations which are selected from the " Report" and the 
" speeches" under notice, are less than a moiety of those offensive and 
exceptionable parts, with which its readers must be struck, and exhibit- 
ing a kindred spirit of delusion and fanaticism. Indeed it is highly 
probable that many who have read the Report, will feel surprised that 
other extravagances than those named have not been selected for ani- 
madversion. The limits however, of this brief review, would not suf- 
fice for much greater amplification, even had we time or inclination to 
be more minute. We have been content with selecting a few promi- 
nent features of the publication, exhibiting the scope and spirit of the 



whole performance, that those who have not had the patience to read 
it, may nevertheless judge correctly of its character and tendency. 

But for the recent popular ferment and commotion, into which the 
minds of our citizens have been thrown, by the practical development 
of Anti-slavery measures, and the public indignation consequent there- 
on, this review would have appeared immediately after the publication 
of the Report, with the design, that if an adequate antidote is here fur- 
nished, it might accompany the poison. Such however has been the 
state of the public mind, that most persons have been disqualified for 
calm and deliberate judgment, on the points involved in the agitation 
of the elements, and therefore it has been withheld. And now, when 
it is fairly presumable, that the reign of reason and dispassionate judg- 
ment has been restored, and before any new or offensive attitude has 
been taken by the misguided men, who have brought upon themselves 
and others these' public calamities ; it would seem that it is a fit time 
to canvass their doctrines, and if possible explode their errors. Be- 
lieving that this can now be done prudently and safely, and without 
any probability of contributing to the renewal of the lawless outrages, 
which we all deplore, howeyer much we may deprecate the causes 
which have furnished the pretext for such enormities, the present time 
has been chosen for our publication. And we confess that we Avould 
fain be timely and early in our remonstrance with the authorities of 
the Anti-slavery Society, lest they should mistake the opposition deeply 
felt in this whole community, for a mere irrational effervescence among 
the ignorant and depravefl, and deceive themselves into the delusion 
that they are persecuted for righteousness sake ; for if the latter im- 
pression should unhappily be taken, and if these bewildered men, 
should attempt a renewal of their offensive meetings and addresses in 
this city, or indeed any where else in the land, from mistaken views of 
Christian duty, we greatly fear that they would involve themselves 
and their fellow citizens in still greater calamities. 

As men, as citizens, and as Christians, we would be criminally un 
mindful of the golden rule, and of our obligations to them, in all these 
relations, if we did not affectionately and earnestly admonish them, 
that the public mind is not, and cannot be, prepared to listen to the 
doctrines they advocate, whatever evidence they think they have of 
their own patriotism, philanthropy, and Christianity. Nor can they 
hope to find any permanent solace, in the self-complacency which ac- 
companies the innocent, under unrighteous persecution. If they are 
Christians, they should remember that their Divine Master once 



PREFACE. 5 

said, " 1 have many things to say to you but ye cannot ^earthem yet," 
and when his voice was drowned by a public clamour, he " went out 
from among them," and he charged his disciples even when " perse- 
cuted in one city, to flee to another." . And if their Lord, who " knew 
what is in man," thus spake and thus acted, surely they should take 
"the world as it is, and not as they think it ought to be," if they would 
be " followers of Him." 

Let it not be supposed, however, that in thus reasoning with these 
mistaken and misguided men on their own ground, we abate a single 
iota of the censure and reprobation which we have attempted to show 
is justly merited- by the attitude they have taken. We believe they are 
radically wrong in their theorizing, and by consequence, radically 
wrong in their practice, and this we have attempted to prove in the 
following pages. Still, to their persons we feel nought but good will, 
while for their errors we have no more charity than for sin in any 
other form. In the discharge of our duty to them, and the cause of 
patriotism and religion, we have therefore spoken plainly and fearlessly, 
as one that must give an account. " What I have written, I have 
written." 

THE AUTHOR. 



A BRIEF REVI E W 



"FIRST ANNUAL REPORT 



THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY," &c. 



As the pamphlet entitled " The First Annual Report of the 
American Anti-Slavery Society," &c., and containing a detailed 
account of the proceedings at the anniversary meeting, has been 
published hy the society, and circulated hy its agents, the pub- 
lic may surely regard its contents as an official promulgation of 
its doctrines and designs. The members and friends of that 
society cannot therefore justly complain of being identified with 
this published document, nor of being held responsible at the bar 
oi public opinion for the sentiments thus officially acknowledged 
and publicly avowed. In the present animadversion, therefore, 
upon the contents of their own pamphlet, they cannot allege that 
sentiments or principles are ascribed to them which they do 
not hold ; nor can they justly complain of the " misrepresenta- 
tions of their enemies." It is for this reason that the writer de- 
clines to offer any remarks on other, and semi-official publica- 
tions, such as those with which, for some months past, the land 
has been deluged. And though reference be occasionally made 
to the opinions and conduct of individuals, leading members of 
the anti-slavery societies, it will be done for the purpose of illus- 
trating the doctrines of the pamphlet under review ; and then, 
only when such individuals are fully sustained in that publica- 
tion. This course is taken in order that no injustice or unfair- 
ness may be alleged, and that the cause of " immediate abolition,^^ 
and the project of a forced and unnatural elevation of the African 
race, as taught and insisted on by " the American Anti-Slavery 
Society," may be weighed in the balances of even handed justice^ 
and impartially tried before the majesty of truth. 

The writer avows himself to be the uncompromising enemy 
of slavery, and the friend of universal emancipation, in this and 
in every land; and therefore regards the existing system of 



8 

slavery as a legitimate subject of discussion through the pulpit 
or the press, provided that discussion be 'peaceably conducted; 
and provided also, th*at the genius of our government and the 
principles of our civil compact be neither assailed nor impugned 
in such discussions. 

As an American, he is heartily a believer in the doctrines of 
the " Declaration of Independence ;" and, at the same time, firmly 
and indissolubly attached to the " Articles of Confederation 
and perpetual Union between the States," as well as " the Con- 
stitution of the United States," upon which the perpetuity and 
the very existence of our glorious union depends. As a Christian, 
he recognises the paramount claims and authority of the divine 
law, and would fain render implicit obedience and unqualified 
submission to its requirements, and inculcate similar sentiments 
and practice upon others. And as a Jivman being, he admits in 
all its length and breadth, the propriety and universality of that 
law of nature, which constitutes each individual of his fellow 
men, a man and a brother. But believing, as he most conscien- 
tiously and religiously does, that all these several relations can, 
and do, harmoniously and consistently coexist, and that the duties 
and obligations growing therefrom, do not in any wise conflict ; 
he is therefore, after a thorough investigation of the whole sub- 
ject, deliberately persuaded that the doctrines and practice of the 
American Anti-Slavery Society are utterly irreconcilable with 
the consistent character either of an American citizen or an Ameri- 
can Christian. It is therefore that he advocates the abolition of 
slavery m the United States by gradual emancipation ; and feels 
it to be a high and sacred duty both to oppose the project of imme- 
diate aholition, and to assist the American Colonization Society, 
which presents the only discoverable plan of consistently and 
peacefully promoting the gradual and ultimate abolition of 
slavery, and the only rational project of elevating the character 
and condition of the coloured population of the United States ; in 
which, as American citizens, philanthropists, and Christians, we 
can safely unite. 

The writer therefore utterly disclaims the allegation of being 
either an advocate or apologist for slavery ; for he never had, or 
can have, any personal or individual interest, pecuniary or other- 
wise, either in the system of slavery or in the success of the 
colonization cause. As a citizen of the United States, however, 
he cannot be an indifferent spectator to the scenes which have 
recently transpired in the North, which threaten to " disturb our 
Union" precisely as predicted by " the Father of our country" in 
his "Farewell Address," when he warned his countrymen against 
arraying " the North against the South," as though, by prophetic 



inspiration, he foreknew the present schemes of ^^ designing 
menP And surely it would be atfectation in any Christian to 
profess indifference to the unhappy tendencies already developed 
among fellow-professors of our common Christianity, by the 
recent attitude of the friends of " immediate abolitioiiP It is 
therefore with the humble hope of being- instrumental in exhibit- 
ing the errors of the American Anti-Slavery Society, both to its 
friends and enemies, and exposing to public view the direct 
and palpable mischiefs of its tendency both upon the free and 
the enslaved among our African population, as well as its 
Anti-American and Anti-Christian character, that the present 
task has been undertaken. 

This then is an appeal to the understanding, the conscience, 
and the heart of every man and woman in this land, who values 
the truths the whole truth, and nothing hut the truth. The 
subject is one confessedly of absorbing interest, in every aspect, 
and ought to be calmly and dispassionately weighed in the light 
of facts^ with the aid of enlightened reason and Divine revelation. 
We repeat, that it has become a subject of great and absorbing 
interest ; and whether viewed poliiicalli/, in its influence on the 
existence and destinies of our republican institutions; or socially^ 
in its bearing upon the purity and happiness of our domestic 
relations; or religiously, in its connexion with the department of 
public morals, and public virtue ; there can be no consistent 
neutrality on the part of any individual patriot, philanthropist, or 
Christian. 

Slavery exists in our land, with all its attendant evils, physical 
and intellectual, political and moral — evils, too, which are 
scarcely capable of exaggeration. Its existence and its per- 
petuation by the will of state sovereignty, is provided for by the 
Constitution of the Union ; and the protection of slave jyroperty 
is recognised by the laws of the land, as equally obligatory upon 
the several states inhere slavery is abolished, as upon those 
ivhere it exists. And although we in the North have effected 
voluntary emancipation by the exercise of the powers vested in 
our state legislatures, yet our brethren of the South, in the exer- 
cise of the same sovereignty, not only choose to continue slavery 
among them as a system, but absolutely prohibit emancipation, 
except on condition of removal from the state. Such then is 
the political aspect of this great subject ; and it is under such 
circumstances that " the American* Anti-Slavery Society" insist 

* The title of American can with no more justice or propriety be applied to 
such a society as this obviously is in name and in fact, than to an Anti-Liberty 
Society ; and for this plain reason, that the liberty of the free is not more amply 
guarded and fully secured by the lawn of tke.la^id, than is the slavery of the 

2 



la 

upon "immediate abolition, without expatriation/' in the lan- 
guage of the second article of their constitution. In the same 
article, they proclaim that " slave-holding is a heinous crime in 
the sight of God," and also award their decision, that " the dirti/y 
safety, arid best interests of all concerned, require its im,mediate 
abandonment.''^ And of all this, they declare it is their "aim to 
convince all their fellow-citizens by arguments addressed to their 
understandings and consciences.'''' . The character of these 
arguments, as exhibited ni the pamphlet before us, will presently 
claim our notice, as well as the principles they are designed to 
enforce. 

. We therefore invite attention first to the report itself, which 
will be found to be one of the most extraordinary productions of 
modern date, not merely in its dogmatism and declamation^ but 
in the iinposture it attempts on the public credulity. After a few 
introductory remarks, the report commences by what we regard 
as an unparalleled insult to the understandings of our citizens, 
m the following preposterous assumption of being the originators 
of sym,pathy lor the enslaved, of being the exclusive discoverers 
of the duty of proinoting emancipation ! We insert the whole 
paragraph, italicising the sentences most emphatic. 

" In tracing the history of the present Anti-Slavery move- 
ments, we have not far to go in the records of the past. For 
though there have not been wanting, since the days of Bene 
zet, individuals who have occasionally borne a noble testi 
mony against slavery ; yet their voices have . been overborne 
and drowned ; there has been no devotion of life to the cause 
of reform, no concentration of effort, no kindling up of ge- 
neral sympathy, no mustering of hosts against the monster. 
Till the organization of the Neio-England Anti-Slavery 
Society in 1832, there was scarcely a rill of pity for the 
slave! which was not diverted to the expatriation of the 
FREE. The formation of that Society, so much despised and 
derided, was the era of a mighty reformation. It led on to 
the Convention of the 4th of December, in Philadelphia. 

enslaved. Both societies would be Anti-American in principle and tendency, 
because either is, in its very name, an infringement of our civil rights, a palpable 
assault upon the constitution of the country. It is plain then that those who 
thus conspire against the supreme authorities of the land, as well as the rights 
legitimately claimed under our laws by any portion of our fellow-citizens, 
however pure their motives or laudable their ultimate aim, do nevertheless 
endanger the very existence of our civil institutions, and sap the foundations 
of the noble edifice of American freedom. 



11 

Then the standard was raised distinctly before the whole 
American people. The effect is as if an oppressive spell had 
been removed from the humanity of the nation. Men are 
every where aivaking to the claim of two millions of their 
brethren in bondage^ — they are astonished at their former 
prejudice, and blindness, and folly ; they are girding on the 
armour of our victorious principles."* 

Such presumptuous effrontery on the part of these novices in 
philanthropy, of these raw recruits in the cause of emancipation, 
if their insignificance did not forbid it, would subject them to the 
derision of the universe. As it is, it can only provoke a smile of 
contempt from every man of sense, to witness such consummate 
arrogance. They do indeed name the great and good Benezet, 
and allude to others as bearing a noble testimony occasionally 

* So then, " we are the people ; and wisdom, and humanity too, will die with 
us;" for every rill of pity now felt for the slave, came into existence with them. 
In their innocent simplicity they seem to have forgotten, that all that ca?;- be done 
in the free states has been accomplished to their hands some years ago, by men 
of whom it used to be thought in old fashioned times, that their hearts were not 
altogether steeled against the impulses of humanity. It may not be within the 
knowledge of these newly fledged philanthropists, whose claims to this charac- 
ter bear date since 183-.', that there once lived a gentleman in this country, a 
philanthropist somewhat distinguished in his day, by the name of Benjamin 
Franklin. He was a plain man, and studiously unostentatious in his deeds of 
benevolence. In 1785, he founded the Pennsylvania Manumission Society in 
the city of Philadelphia; and shortly after the New-York Manumission Society 
was instituted ; and in New- Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode 
Island, similar societies were organized, although these several states were 
then slave states, as well as New-York. The object was, to promote the 
abolition of slavery by peaceable means, and the subsequent improvement and 
elevation of the condition of the free, by the institution of schools. They held 
annual conventions, which are still continued. By judicious, gradual, and 
well directed efforts, they have efl'ected the extinguishment of slavery in all the 
states north of D^ 'aware. A succession of acts were passed at their instance 
by the Legislatui^ of New-York, until, in 1817, an act of total abolition was 

Eassed, which took effect in 1827. In all the philanthropic operations of these 
enevolent men, so strangely underrated and overlooked, for we are here told 
there was scarcely a rill of pity for the slave until 1832 ; no outrage has been 
committed on the public peace, and the society enjoy the confidence of the be- 
nevolent public, in the South as well as the North. 

For more than 30 years has the manumission school in this city been in suc- 
cessful operation. In maintaining these schools, the Manumission Society has 
been instant in season and out of season, and have succeeded in building up 
no less than eight free African male and female schools; .so that throus-h their 
eflforts, ample provision has been made for the education of every coloured 
child in the city of New-York. For 40 years, moreover, has a standing com- 
mittee of this Society watched over the rights of the fugitive slaves, and those 
who have been claimed in this city, and have investigated all cases down to the 
present day, provided and paid counsel, and also extended their care to all 
cases of free coloured people, who have been arrested in Southern states, and 
afforded them the protection of the laws. And yet these noble efforts, and the 
\miform labours of the Society of Friends collectively and individually employed, 
are all too insignificant to be named. 



12 

3^ainst slavery ; but Lay, and Sandiford, and Woolman, and 
Fi-anklin, who preceded Benezet ; and Jay, and Tyson, and Rush, 
and hundreds more of sacred memory, who have since laboured 
in the same cause, are all annihilated in the mirror of self-com- 
placency before whicli this huge • Anti-Slavery Society is reflect- 
ing its gigantic proportions. And accordingly we find it made a 
matter of grave record, that there has been " no devotion of life 
to the cause of reform, no concentration of effort^ no kindling up 
of genercd sympatJiy, and until tlie organization of the New- 
England Anti-Slavery Society in 1832 ! there was scarcely a rill 
of pity for the slave, which was not diverted for the expatriation 
of the free !" Such shameless extravagance and brazen untruths, 
would indicate the charitable imputation of insanity upon its 
authors, if we did not Icnow, that an obliquity of mental vision, 
and an obtusity of moral feeling, that is allied to insanity in its 
developments, are often found to characterize every form of 
fanaticism. 

If the representations here given of our country have any 
semblance of truth, the Christians of this land, in the past and 
present century, down to the year 1832, have been not merely 
involved in " the prejudice, and blindness, and folly" of which 
they are here accused, but they have possessed a savage bruta- 
lity, and destitution of moral sense, which is not excelled by any 
instance of heathen barbarism. " /Scarcely a rill of pity for the 
slave'^ was felt by philanthropists or Christians until 1832, which 
was not diverted to the expatriation of the free ; and as this latter 
diversion was only proposed in 1816, up to that period there 
could have been 7io pity ! ! Indeed, we are here told that the 
removal of the "oppressive spell from the humanity of the na- 
tion," was the effect of " a Convention held on the 4th of De- 
cember, 1833, at Philadelphia!!" since which portentous era, 
the Americans are " awaking''' and " astonished at their /orwer 
prejudice^ and blindness, and folly !" The reader must not be 
shocked at learning the stupendous results of that Convention, 
for the first time, in this place ; for the white population of the 
city where it met in December last, have yet to receive the intel- 
ligence of this august assemblage ! Had the moral earthquake 
here described been anticipated, Philadelphia would not thus 
have so sadly overlooked the wonderful convulsion which pro- 
duced so extraordinary phenomena ! 

After a narrative of the agencies employed, the number of 
publications issued, and the presses enlisted in " drawing that 
arch deceiver from its hiding place" meaning the American 
Colonization Society, the Report proceeds, — 

" But we have still more occasion for gratitude to the God 



13 

of the oppressed, for the hold which our principles have taken 
in a number of colleges. It is an omen of immense good. It 
opens a sure path to the overthrow of slavery, not in name 
merely, but in all its fearful and varied realities. Let some 
of our higher institutions trample on the cord of caste ! open 
their doors to all, without distinction of complexion ! educate 
a number of talented men of colour, and show the world what 
sort of minds slavery crushes in the dust ; and the spell is 
broken, prejudice gives way, and two millions of chains fall 
asunder." 

Here it cannot be denied, that the doctrine of " amalo:amation 
of the races," so frequently disclaimed, is manifestly broached ; 
and accordingly, after referring to the Western Reserve College, 
and the Oneida Institute, in one of which there are two coloured 
students, and the other is understood to be opened to the blacks, 
it is significantly added, " We trust that the friends of the op- 
pressed will not be slow to support an institution, which promi- 
ses so much to the cause oi humanity in its struggle with preju- 
dice and the. foul spirit of caste !" Here, then, the repngnance 
existing in our higher institutions of learning among professors 
and students, against mingling on terms of perfect equality with 
the blacks, is ascribed to inhumanity, prejudice, and the foul 
spirit of caste ! And the two of the " higlier institutions''' here 
named, are represented as exclusively arrayed on the side of /m- 
onanity ! 

But next we have the intelligence, that the students of the 
Lane Seminary, near Cincinnati, Ohio, have adopted the senti- 
ments of the Society, and that " measures have been taken to 
establish a first rate seminary for coloured, females, and a lady 
has been enlisted for an instructress, who lacks not talen'ts to 
place the school among the first in the country." This last is a 
result highly honourable to all concerned, and one against 
which no opposition from any quarter need be apprehended, if 
the institution be not offensively located, and if it be nnobjec- 
tionably conducted. It is difficult to see, however, the '• hu- 
manity'''' of such a measure, on their own principles ; for if this 
seminary be not composed of white and coloured females, 
" without distinction of complexion ;" it will only be a standing 
and enduring monument of the " cruelty of prejudice," and 
" the miffhtier and more cruel cord of caste /" 

The Report next refers to the laudable ettbrts of the free co- 
loured people, by conventions, held among themselves at Phila- 
delphia, and in the estabhshment of the Phoenix Society at 



14 

New- York, in terms of merited approbation; though the con- 
nexion between such objects as the latter Society proposes with 
the present Anti-slavery movements is not so apparent. 

The paragraph which follows, presents a clearer expression 
of the designs entertained and the hopes indulged, of the amal- 
gamation of the races, in our literary institutions ; and distinctly 
avows that this is but an entering wedge to effecting the same 
result in every possible aspect. 

" These interesting facts lead us to some important corir 
elusions, which, in passing, we cannot forbear to remark. 
There is no way to destroy the prejudice which lies at the 
foundation of slavery, but to invite our coloured brethren to 
a participation with us iti all those happy atid elevating 
institutions which are open to others ! No efforts, how- 
ever powerful or well-intended, which aim only to build up 
separate institutions for their special benefit, under the de- 
nomination, so odious to them ! of " coloured''^ or " African" 
can heal the wound. They will end only in conferring upon 
their objects a keener sensibility to insult, and in establishing 
between the races an animosity, settled and remediless. Pro- 
vidence seems most kindly to have opened before us the path 
of safety and success, in creating so' strong an Anti-Slavery 
sentiment in many of our most hopeful seminaries. Let 
those vigorous institutions be opened, as we doubt not they 
will be, to youth, irrespective of complexion, and in ten years 
our country will number among its most talented sons, men 
of the sable hue— giants in intellect, who will smile as they 
shake off the green withes in which an absurd prejudice 
would confine them — who will not be overborne by insult, 
any more than the lion by the dew of the morning, which 
he shakes from his mane." 

Hereafter it will be utterly vain for the Society, or any of its 
officers or members, to enter a " disclaimer of any design to pro- 
mote or encourage amalgamation by intermarriages," unless they 
disclaim marriage as being among " those happy and elevating 
institutions which are open to others /" for to ALL of these, 
without exception, it is declared to be indispensable that we 
" INVITE our coloured brethren to a participation loith us.'" 
And accord ingl J'-, in our political, religious, and social relations, 
there must be no " distinction of colour," but they are to be open 



15 

to all, " irrespective of complexion !" Conventions, societies, 
and churches, now " under the denomination, so odious to them, 
of coloured or African^^'' must be annihilated ! ! Has it never 
occurred to these wise men, that these " separate institutions" 
called " coloured or African," and therefore " so odioii,s to them^^ 
are not a whit less odious, than the proposition of amalgamation 
in any of these aspects is to our white population ? Is there no 
*' criminal prejudice," in this odiousness of which the coloured 
people complain, because they are not invited to perfect equality 
with us, and because they are called " coloured" by way of dis- 
tinction, or " African" in reference to their origin? And why do 
not these champions of anti-prejudice enlighten, reprove and re- 
form these objects of their exclusive philanthropy ? Surely they 
would find this •' prejudice vincible" before the mighty weapons 
they use. 

But if there remain any doubt, whether this Society does 
indeed design thus to prostrate every barrier which separates the 
races from free and unrestrained amalgamation, we refer to the 
59th page of the pamphlet, for a demonstration that both sexes 
are distinctly included in the grossness of their delusion. The 
report adopts the following language, 

" Let it be the glory of our sons, and DAUGHTERS ! ! to have 
been educated in seminaries, which were open to worthy appli- 
cants without regard to complexion, that the NEXT GENERA- 
TION may be disenthralled from those narrow arid despicable 
prejudices which have trammelled the present." 

Hero is the outrageous proposition of these visionary enthu- 
siasts, by which they fully declare their pui'pose, and if their 
unnatural objects could be attained, the next generation would 
indeed have potent and omnipotent reasons for being disenthral- 
led, for we should then be a nation of mulattoes and mongrels. 
Such a proposition from any source, entitles its authors to the 
execration of their species. 

If, however, we arlniit the supposition that they do not contem- 
plate the amalgamation of the races by intermarriages, we think 
it is a legitimate and necessary inference from these avowals of 
their Report, that they are at least itickless and indifterent as to 
this result, and that they feel no repugnance • to such a conse- 
quence, if it should follow. Indeed, if it were not irrelevant to 
our present purpose, we might here demonstrate, that intermar- 
riage is the only possible way in which the African race can 
ever be elevated either to political or social equality with the 
whites, if both races are to occupy the same country. All histo- 
ry does not furnish an instance of such an elevation of a degra- 
ded population, by any other means. And who does not per- 



16 

ceive that the elevation of our coloured population in the United 
States above the relation and position they at present occupy, if 
ever effected, must be done in one of two ways ? Either by 
placing them by themselves, in Africa or some other country, 
sufficiently remote from the United States, and thus constituting 
them into a distinct nation ; or by consenting to the most unna- 
tural and offensive amalgamation. All civil and political equali- 
ty is founded upon social and domestic equality, and the uni- 
versal experience of mankind will demonstrate, that intermar- 
riage lies at the foundation of both. He therefore who aims at 
producing the former, in any aspect, must consent fully to the 
latter, whether it enter into his plans and purposes or not, since 
it is necessarily included : and hence, when any of those advo- 
cates of immediate emancipation who publicly disclaim the doc- 
trine of amalgamation, are pressed in private conversation with 
the necessary and unavoidable connexion between political and 
domestic equality, and they are constrained to admit that the 
former cannot in the nature of things be attained without the lat- 
ter ; they will invariably agree, that if intermarriages must be 
allowed in order to the elevation of the coloured race, to equal 
rights, that elevation ought to be effected, without regard to con- 
sequences. 

The fact that no white person ever did consent to marry a 
negro, without having previously forfeited all character with the 
whites, and that even profligate sexual intercourse between the 
races, every where meets with the execration of the respectable 
and virtuous among the whites, as the most despicable form of 
licentiousness ; is of itself an irrefragable proof, that equality in 
any aspect in this country is neither practicable nor desirable. 
Criminal amalgamation, may and does exist among the most 
degraded of the species, but Americans will never yield the 
sanctions of law and religion to an equahty so incongruous and 
unnatural. 

The following are the sentiments of a transatlantic writer in a 
late number of the Phrenological Journal of Edinburgh, after 
conclusively arguing against the possibility of incorporating the 
races, between whom the God of nature has drawn a line of 
demarcation, broad, deep, and impassable ; and rationally dedu- 
cing from this strong and universal repugnance, a strildng indi- 
cation of the Divine intention, he says, 

" It is wild fanaticism to call this repugnance 'unchristian 
prejudice,' and to denounce a doubt of the power of religion 
to overcome it as infidelity ; — because God made all men of 
one flesh, and Christianity bids us open wide the arms of 



17 

brotherly love, and take all our brethren of rnankind to our 
bosom. It is a stupid perversion of this religious precept to 
maintain, that the fulfilment of this duty precludes all change 
of the Negro's place of residence, and that the American does 
not in effect hold out to him the arms of brotherly love, by 
placing him' in independence, comparative elevation, and 
abundance, in another country, instead of degradation and 
destitution where he is. God made all men of one flesh, but 
he did not design them all t(J live in one country, and, how 
ever various and unsuitable their aspect and nature, to mix 
and incorporate. If we look at that we^ marked and vast 
peninsula called Africa, we find that equally marked race, the 
Negro, with slight modifications, forming its native population 
througl^out all its regions. We find the temperature of his 
blood, the chemical action of his skin, the very texture of his 
wool-like hair, all fitting him for the vertical sun of Africa ; 
and if every surviving African of the present day who is 
living in degradation and destitution in other lands for which 
he was never intended, were actually restored to the pecu- 
liar land of his peculiar race, in independence and comfort, 
would any man venture to afiirm that Christianity had been 
lost sight of by all who had in any way contributed to such 
a consummation? It matters not to brotherly love on which 
side of the Atlantic the Negro is made enlightened, virtuous, 
and happy, if he is actually so far blessed ; but it does matter 
on which side of the ocean you place him, when there is only 
one where he will be as happy and respectable as benevo- 
lence would wish to see him, and certainly there a rightly ap- 
plied morality and religion would sanction his being placed. 
The incurable evil of the present relation of the whites and 
the blacks in America is, that incorporation is almost ■moral- 
ly impossible. The whites are too numerous in both the 
sexes, to be driven to intermarriage with the Negroes. Mu- 
lattoes are a West Indian, greatly more than an American 
phenomenon. The distinction in the United States is white, 
or black, with little of the intervening shades of colour. Th© 
races do not and toill not incorporate. Try the loudest ad- 
vocates for the ' vincibility' of this prejudice, as it is most 
unphilosophically called, with this touchstone, — ' marry the 
3 



18 

Negresses to your sons, and give your daughters to Ne- 
groes,' — and we shall have a different answer from Nature 
than we receive from a misplaced religious profession." 

We commend this paragraph to the sober intelligence and 
Christian consideration of all concerned. It was published in a 
review of the present controversy, as conducted in 'Great Britain 
by a certain Charles Stuart, the same who is now peregrinating 
through our country, and the notable Wm. Lloyd Garrison when 
in England, who unitedly employed themselves in impeaching 
the American Colonization Society, vilifying the American peo- 
ple, and calumniating that estimable and disinterested philanthro- 
pist, Mr. Elliot Cresson of Philadelphia, in his successful efforts 
to found the "British African Colonization Society." 

But the triumphs on which the Report dwells with so much 
eloquence and zeal, are all inconsiderable in the estimation of its 
authors, in comparison with " another occurrence, long to b(? re- 
membered," and which they term " the full and final exposure of 
the Coloiiization delusion.'^ They indeed admit that the "scheme 
may be advocated a little longer ' on various 'pretences,^' but they 
declare " as a practical matter it is,a^ aw endP " The life and 
the sold of the system has departed." 

The following propositions they declare to be now proven in 
the light of facts, and unalterably and unquestionably establish- 
ed, viz. : 

" 1. The colonization of the free has no tendency to di- 
minish the number of the slaves ! 

2. The free coloured population are spontaneously and 
unanimously opposed to the scheme !• 

3. Colonies are not adapted to Christianize Africa ! 

4- Nothing but the prejudice of the whites renders the 
removal of the blacks at all desirable ! 

5. This prejudice is conquerable by the moral pov/er of 
the gospel !" 

We need only remark, that "in the light of facts," the 1st, 
2d, and 3rd of these propositions, are both arithmetically and mo- 
rally untrue, as must be obvious to every man of sense, white 
or coloured, who understands the rudiments of either arith- 
metic or morals. It would therefore be an insult to the under 
standing of the reader, to offer a single commentary on either 
of them, unless indeed he partake of kindred stupidity with the 
authors, and in that case he is incapable of exhibiting a demon- 



19 

stration of the abolition maxim of " Prejudice vincible," and our 
labour would be the fruit of our pains. 

To the 4th proposition, we will briefly say, that the hardihood 
which could ascribe so base and criminal a motive to Dr. Foth- 
ergill ! Granville Sharp ! Wilberforce ! and Clarkson ! as pre- 
judice against the blacks, in their humane efforts in behalf of 
the colony at Sierra Leone ; and impeach with a similar preju- 
dice the great and good men, who living and dying have re- 
garded the colonization of our coloured population as " desi 
rable,''^ merits only our pity and contempt. Here then we are 
taught, that" our distinguished fellow citizens, Lafayette, Monroe, 
Madison, Marshall, Jefferson, bishops White and Meade, Carroll 
of Carrollton, Bushrod Washington, Henry Clay, Webster, Mer- 
cer, Frelinghuysen, and a host of others, statesmen, patriots, 
philosophers. Christians, and divines, because they consider the 
colonization of our coloured population " desirable," must be 
therefore branded witli being influenced by ^'■nothing but a pre- 
judice against the blacks." If the authors of this proposition, 
were susceptible of shame, they would blush at the infamy 
which it merits. But the 5th proposition declares that " this 
prejudice is conquerable by the moral power of the gospeV^ 
And what is this but a declaration that until the year 1832, the 
" gospel" either had no " moral power," or failed to exert it ; for 
until that period it is affirmed, as we have seen, that this " pre- 
judice" was " an oppressive spell upon the humanity" of the 
whole nation ! If, indeed, we have been until now a nation of 
heathens, destitute of the " moral power of the gospel," which 
is equivalent to a destitution of the gospel itself, these apostles 
who now hold this " moral power" will be responsible if we be 
not universally converted and conquered. How strange does it 
appear to the unsophisticated reader of the New Testament, to 
learn from the Holy Evangelists, that our Lord Jesus Christ, 
the Divine Author of the " gospel," and the great source of all 
its " moral power," never once uttered a single sentence against 
slave holding, that " heinous crime," which is " worse than 
piracy and murder !" And although at the time of our Lord's 
personal ministry, as well as during the period of the labours of 
His Apostles, in founding Christianity, and introducing the 
" moral power of the gospel" into our world ; a sy stein of slavery 
existed under the Roman government, which in point of severity 
far exceeded that of the United States ; yet He and they, in no 
one instance, bore a testimony against this " heinous crime in 
the sight of God .'" Is it not passing: strange that our Lord did 
inot abrogate that part of the Moral Law, which as much for- 
bids the coveting of a man servant or maid servant, as the 



20 

coveting of any otlier species of property. Why did he not ex- 
cept this, when he said " I am not come to destroy the law, but 
to fulfil." This proposition most absurdly and impiously charges 
the Son of God either with ignorance of the " moral power" of 
his own " gospel," or with a most unaccountable omission to 
explain or enforce it. See also Luke xvii. 7, 8, for a distinct 
recognition of slavery as it existed at the time under the laws 
of the country, when the Saviour acted as he uniformly did, 
and as he taught his disciples to do, " Render unto Caesar, the 
things that are Caesar's." 

But St. Paul must have been altogether unacquainted with 
the " moral power of the gospel," for he says, " Art thou called 
being a servant, care not for it, but if thou may est he inadefree^ 
use it rather." " He that is called in the Lord being a servant, 
is the Lord's freeman." " Servants, be subject to your masters, 
with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the 
froward." So also in all those places in which the Apostles en- 
join obedience upon servants^ and enforce the relative obliga- 
tions upon masters, the doctrines of this whole Report would 
imply that the Apostles themselves were ignorant of the " gos- 
pel," or failed to employ its " moral power." Indeed the Report 
tells us in view of these five propositions we have thus briefly 
noticed, that " Just so fast as the full and overwhelming evi- 
dence of these propositions is brought fairly before the candid 
and virtuous, they forsake the colonization cause, and enter the 
ranks of the abolitionists !" 

If their ranks be increased only "just so fast" as any " evi- 
dence of these propositions" is furnished to "the candid and 
virtuous," we need no longer marvel git the paucity of their num- 
bers, which compared with any other popular delusion, is indeed 
singularly inconsiderable ; for there can be no evidence, except 
that which shows their folly, absurdity, and untruth. If the 
numbers who have fully enrolled themselves under the banners 
of the Anti-slavery Society, and ^'- go the wliole''' with them, in 
their measures, could be accurately ascertained ; we apprehend 
that the Mormonites of the west would be found to outnumber 
them, notwilhstaiiding the pomp and circumstance with which 
the former has been urged upon the public mind, and the decep- 
tive charm which attaches to their imposing name, with the re- 
publican feelings of America, where "Liberty" is regarded as a 
household Deity. 

We are next told, that " most men become colonizationists they 
know not why,^'' whereas " none become abolitionists but by a 
searching investigation of facts, not without an entire change of 
thou gilt and feel ins:, a revolution of the soul," &c. We recollect 



21 

« 
a memorable instance of ccJnversion in the person of a leading 
"abolitionist," in whose case it cannot be pretended that there was 
any " searching investigation of facts," for he himself attributes it 
to a discovery made in England^ that the/yee coloured people in 
America, were nearly unanimous in their opposition to Coloni- 
zation ! The latter part of the description we believe to be 
strictly correct, for so entire is the " change of thought and feel- 
ing," and the " revolution of the soul," that some of them seem 
bereft of their reason.*' But the Report adds, that " the zeal and 
energy of this collected band, when kindled up through the 
country, will smeep away the bulwarks of slavery f But hold, 
gentlemen, these " bulwarks of slavery" which you threaten to 
" sweep away," by the " kindling''' up of the tires of your wrath, 
are none other than the " Constitution of the United States," and 
the " laws of the land ;" for slavery has no other " bulwarks." 
You did not know that you would so soon be driven to a public 
disclaimer of any disposition to "interfere with the constitution 
or laws of the country," when you published this report, or you 
would have suppressed it, if you meant, that any disclaimer 
should gain the public credence. In truth, we regard this para- 
graph alone, on the 49th page of your pamphlet, as distinctly 
avowing a purpose to " sweep away" the " bulwarks of slavery," 
regardless of consequences, and hence, we conceive that the 
" zeal and energy" of this " collected band," thus openly arrayed 
against the laws, is ho less treasonable, because of its impotence, 
and ought therefore to be detected, exposed, and defeated in its 
incipient progress, lest the impunity extended to such an avowal 
may embolden its authors to some overt act of outrage and 
treason. 

It is not a httle remarkable, that the authors of this Report, are 
so bewildered in contemplating the wonderful achievements of 
their Society, that they attribute all the sympathy for the slave, 
which they hear of as existing in the South, to the " powerful 
array" which they have erected, and even the laws of Kentucky 
and Tennessee, in favour of the gradual abolition of slavery, are 
attributed to "our publications," and "our doctrines," when these 
laws were originated, if not passed, before the existence of their 
Society, and while they say there was " scarcely a rill of pity for 
the slave." Still, however, they caU the humane provisions of 
those states, that all born hereafter shall be free at twenty-five 
years of age, bui " a wretched mockery of justice .'" 

But the Repoit next refers to the " act of emancipation," re- 
cently passed in Great Britain, by which colonial slavery is 
gradually abolished, with compensation to the masters. And 
here Eigain "^md'?/a/ emancipation" is claimed as the result of 



22 

" the doctrine of immediate emandpation urged upon the con- 
science of the British people !" 

This reference to Great Britain is a most unfortunate illustra- 
tion, from the fact, that the gradual system of emancipation 
adopted with reference to colonial slavery, has been the result of 
forty years' arduous and unceasing labour, by very many of the 
most distinguished philanthropists who ever lived in any country. 
And besides, their act of emancipation in itself admits to the full 
extent, the " right of -property in inan^'' claimed by the slave 
owners, and therefore provides for compensation ; a feature this, 
which the Anti-Slavery Society would be slow to consent to. 
especially incumbered by the gradualism of its character. 

But the reference is still more unfortunate, coupled as it is 
with an allusion to "two advocates of the British slaves, Charles 
Stuart, and George Thompson, who are expected soon to arrive 
on our shores, to devote their noble energies to the same cause." 
The former, called in the Report " a beloved coadjutor^'' has 
arrived, and is now an itinerant agent, enlightening the Ameri- 
cans on the subject of the laws and institutions of their own 
country ! The Report may talk of " the narrow prejudice of 
clati, dignified by the name of national pride," but Americans 
will never be indifferent to the dangers of " foreign influence." 
The language of the Father of his country can never be foj'gotten 
or unheeded, when he said " Against the insidious iviles of for- 
eign influence, [I co?ijure you to believe me, fellow citizens,) the 
jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since 
history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of 
the tnost banefid foes of repnhlican government .'" Such was 
the language of the great and good Washington, and can never 
be repeated too often to his countrymen. And there never was 
a time when foreign influence should be more deprecated, nor 
was there ever a subject, an interference with which, by the 
agents of a foreign government, should be more diligently guard- 
ed, than the present. No pretensions to philanthropy, however 
exclusive, and even disinterested in such agents, can be safely 
tolerated in this country, lest foreign zealots by thousands may 
be imported for the ostensible purpose of promoting the abolition 
of slavery, who may be instrumental in promoting less worthy 
objects. Let our countrymen take warning then, by this early 
movement of the Anti-slavery party, lest they repent their indif- 
ference at their leisure when it will be unavailing.* 

* We perceive by the papers, that a foreigner, who professes to be a minister 
of the gospel, has been lately figuring at the East, and has received a gentle re- 
buke from a portion of the public press, for his assault upon the institutions of 
the country, and his violent declamation in favour of " immediate abolition," 



23 

But to proceed with the Report, we next find a pathetic de- 
scription of the hapless condition of the slaves, which though 
strongly tinctured with the extravagance of the party, is never- 
theless prompted by humanity, and in the main may be true. 
But the highly wrought narratives of several instances of fugi- 
tive slaves, who have been arrested in this city and elsewhere, 
and according to the laws of the land restored to their owners, 
in which these masters and their agents are called " legalized 
kidnapper s,^^ is, to say the least, of doubtful expediency and of 
questionable tendency too. That such publications are calcula- 
ted to excite resistance to the laws will not be questioned, whe- 
ther designed for this purpose or not. For an example, we refer 
to ih.e, following paragraph, which follows the narratives refer- 
red to, and we appeal to the understanding and conscience of 
the reader, whether such a publication is not " incendiary" in 
its character, and whether such sentiments and language be not 
Anti- American and Anti-Christian. That they are illogical and 
absurd, is of less importance than their abstract wickedness. 

" These persecuted people, when apprehended as fugitives, 
quietly submit to the iniquitous lato, and seldom is any vio- 
lent effort made by their friends for their rescue ; but, say 
the masters, if they were emancipated, they would rise and 
cut the throats of their benefactors ! It is time the friends 
of freedom had awaked from their disgraceful slumbers. 
The truth is, and it must be suppressed no longer, we have 
been hired to abet oppression — to be the tools of tyrants — to 
look on coolly while 2,000,000 of our brethren have been 
stripped of every right, and ivorse than murdered ! So- 
lemnly we say, and we stake all on the pledge, that there is 
not wealth enough in the universe any longer to buy our 
acquiescence in this base and abominable subserviency. 
Common sense teaches us, that it is no less a crime to op- 

in a state and among a people where slavery was abolished long before he left 
his own land. It is worthy of remark that the records of the General Assembly 
of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, will show that this same fo- 
reign incendiary, but a fewyears ago, received the highest ecclesiastical censure' 
of that body, ior'cruelty and inhuvianitAj to his oion servants, in one of our slave 
states. He is not now a member of that body, and yet he is peregrinating 
through the North and East, declaiming against the cruelties of slave hold- 
ing, which he knows by experience, and in conjunction with another foreign 
emissary, instructing the ignorant Americans in the laws and institution.s of 
their own country ! Patriotism and Christianity should alike forbid our citizens 
to listen to such officious intermeddling in our country's affairs by these im- 
ported demagogues. 



24 

press an already injured man, than to seize a fresh victim ; 
that what is crime in Africa, is no less so in the United 
States ; that if the foreign slave-trade has been jnstly de- 
clared piracy, it was always piracy ; consequently the man 
who seizes another ih Nev;-York, and drags him away into 
bondage, whatever laws he may have in his favour^ is to be 
regarded as a robber and pirate ! We do not understand 
the constitution of the United States to justify such a crimi- 
nal at all. If roe did, we would never cease to labour to 
wipe off so foul and deadly a stain from that noble instru- 
ment ; for we remember an older and nobler constitution, 
which says — '•'■ Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the 
servant which is escaped from his master unto thee : he shall 
dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he 
shall choose, in one of thy gates where it liketh him best ; 
thou shalt not oppress him." — Dent, xxiii. 15, 16. 

If this be not unsophisticated nullification, we have yet to 
learn an instance in the history of our country. We invite a 
reference to the several expressions which are italicized, and 
pass on without any farther comment. 

For the special benefit of all who are imposed upon by this 
reference to the Bible, and for the purpose of showing the want 
of candor and consistency exhibited by the quotation made from 
Deuteronomy, we will however, en passant, refer to Leviticus 
xxv. 44, 45, 46, which in justice to " the older and nobler con- 
stitution" ought to accompany the scriptural citation here made. 

"Both thy bondmen and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt 
have, shall be of the heathen that are around about you, of them 
shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover, of the child 
ren of the strangers, that do sojourn among you, of them shall 
ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they be- 
gat in your land, and they shall be your possession. And ye 
shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to 
inherit them for a possession ; they shall be your bondmen for- 
ever ; but over your brethren, the children of Israel, ye shall not 
rule over one another with rigour."' 

We introduce this quotation because it is equally applicable 
with that in the Report, though neither of them can legitimately 
be claimed as having the least bearing on American slavery. It 
may sen-e to show, however, that even Satan can quote scrip- 
ture, and often does it, " when he lieth in wait to deceive." 

The appeal for funds with which the Report concludes in a 



25 

strain of rhapsody and poetry, though somewhat ludicrous, 
would be less objectionable if the society had informed the pub^ 
lie precisely what they propose to do with the 2U,00U dollars 
v/hich they modestly ask for the present year. How many tro- 
phies of immediate abolition will that sum procure? If we may 
estimate the character of their future expenditure of funds by the 
past, we must conclude that anti-slavery though they be, this 
whole amount is to be disbursed for printing newspapers, hand- 
bills, and reports like the present, and in employing editors and 
agents, British and American, to travel through the northern 
states, where there are no slaves, and denounce their fellow- 
citizens of the south as robbers and pirates ! not forgetting to de- 
claim against the Constitution of the land, as '■ a compact jit only 
for devils to makeP'' and the Colonization Society as '■•originated 
in hell /" All this while the poor slaves are forgotten, and the 
public money given to promote abolition is to be squandered in 
arraying the north against the south, increasing the miseries and 
privations of the slaves, augmenting the prejudice against colour, 
which they so loudly deprecate, and exciting popular tumult, 
commotion, and alarm. 

Meanwhile, if the 20,000 dollars they propose to expend the 
present year, in this crusade against " vincible prejudice," with- 
out producing a single instance of immediate abolition or anti- 
slavery practice, were paid into the funds of the American Colo- 
nization Society, one thousand emancipated slaves might be 
placed in freedom upon the land of their fathers, who else may 
be doomed with their posterity to hopeless and interminable 
bondage. Which of these institutions then deserves the epithet 
of " delusion," and which of them is truly " anti-slavery" in 
practice, judge ye ! And let the true friends of emancipation 
pause, before they consent to contribute to the treasury of a 
society, which, though proft^ssing to be anti-slavery in theory, 
expends all its energies and its funds in idle declamation, or the 
support of an incendiary press, without one single example of 
" immediate abolition," without breaking the fetters of a single 
slave ! 

Such are the strictures which a sense of duty has called forth 
upon this 1st Report published by the American Anti-Slavery 
Society, and it now remains briefly to remark on the speeches 
delivered at the late Anniversary meeting, as officially issued 
by the Executive Committee, in connexion with the Report, and 
by which act the Society assumes the responsibility of the senti- 
ments and doctrines they inculcate. 

The first of these speeches is that of Rev. Amos A. Phelps, 
late of Boston, now the permanent agent of this Society. He 
4 



26 

introduced a resolution declaring slaxe-holding- to be piracy, 
equally atrocious with slaYe-trading. Though he admits this 
to be "very high ground," yet he attempted to sustain it, by 
affirming that what " constitutes slave-holding the crime of 
piracy, is the simple act of reducing a fj'eeman to the condition 
of a slave, — wresting from a hutnan being the ownership of 
himself P This is a most singular definition of piracy, and in 
its application to the slaves of the United States is singularly 
inapplicable. When was any one of these slav^es a freeman 7 
Or when did he possess the ownership of himself 7 If his defini- 
tion be admitted in its full extent, it would be impossible to ghow 
that this act of jnraci/ was ever committed in this country. 
Certainly no man is now a slave who ever was a freeman ; and 
there are but few whose parents were not slaves, perhaps for 
several generations. And certainly there lives not the man in the 
southern states who was ever guilty of " reducing a freeman to 
the condition of a slave, or ever wrested from a human being the 
ownership of himself," and as this is alleged as constituting 
piracy, no slave-holder has been guilty of this crime accordins: to 
Mr. P.'s own showing. They never were "freemen," nor did they 
ever possess the " ownership of themselves," and if the crime he 
describes were ever committed, by the ancestors of the present 
race of slave-holders, these criminals have long since gone to the 
judgment of Him who will do no wrong. And this " proverb is 
no longer known in Israel, the fathers have eaten sour grapes 
and the children's teeth are set on edge." Mr. P. reminds us of 
the " fable of the wolf and the lamb," which furnishes an apt 
illustration of the spirit and scope of his heinous charge against 
thousands of his fellow-citizens, who have given evidence of 
Christian character and spotless integrity, which all his denun- 
ciations and anathemas will fail to tarnish. 

But this reverend agent would find it no easy task to show 
that the slaves of this country were ever freemen, even in their 
ancestry, to however remote a period he might trace the genealogy 
of any individual among them. Can he designate an individual 
slave, who is descended from a freeman, even in Africa 'I Can 
he furnish the pedigree of any number of them, whose fore- 
fathers when removed from their own country were not either 
prisoners of war, or who had not otherwise forfeited the^'r lives 
by the laws of their own country? Or is he ignorant of the 
palpable and cruel bondage of the tribes of Africa to their petty 
kings, who hold unlimited power over the liberty and even the 
lives of their subjects ? 

It is true, that after Mr. P.'s precise definition of piracy before 
mentioned, he adds, "i^ is this, divested of all its circum,stances !" 



27 

Indeed ! Then the civil authorities ot our country, when they 
" reduce a freeman to the condition of a slave," by sending him 
to the state prison, and " wrest from a human being; the owner- 
ship of himself," by committing him to the penitentiary, or 
sentencing him to the gallows ; in all these cases, both judges 
and juries are guilty of piracy^ for " it is this divested of all its 
circumstances." And even in those states where the laws admit 
of imprisonment for debt, every such instance is an act oi piracy 
on the part of all concerned. The truth is, the proposition, and 
the logic by which it is sustained, are alike contemptible ; and 
the friends of the society should place their "permanent agency" 
in better hands. 

But Mr. P. is not content with the affirmation that slave-holding 
is piracy equally with slave-trading, but he adds " If there is 
any difference in criminality, slave-holding is the loorst of the 
two !" so that all who are implicated in the latter, " divested of 
all circumstances," are worse than pirates, and this is almost a 
parallel to the language of the Report, which affirms that the 
slaves are '^ worse than murdered .'" Both piracy and murder 
are capital offences in our country, and we know not what 
penalty this Rev. gentleman would inflict upon criminals woi'se 
than both, unless he meditates another Southampton massacre, 
and means to show that even this is merited, by all who are 
guilty of slave-holding, which is a crime worse than piracy and 
murder ! We pity the infatuation of the man who could make 
such a speech, and still more the weakness and malignity of 
those who could listen to it without indignation. 

But we forbear to pursue any farther the folly and extravagance 
of this newly-fledg-ed agent, for the whole speech is a tissue of 
similar rant, hyperbole, and fiction, and is characterized by an 
excess of bitterness which carries with it its own refutation. We 
will only add, that he accuses the civil authorities of the city of 
New York with the crime of piracy, in restoring fugitive slaves 
to their owners by legal process, according to the provisions of 
the Constitution and the statutes of the state, which they are 
sworn to support ; for he declares it to be " legalized violence as 
we see done in New York, but still overpowering force, as 7nnch 
as in Africa^ No other "legalized violence" is ever seen in 
New York than that we have named, and yet he pronounces this 
to be piracy, as much as the violence used by the slave-trader or 
kidnapper in obtaining victims in Africa. Such are the senti- 
ments adopted and published as their own, by the American 
Anti-Slavery Society; and our citizens may thus understand 
what they may expect to hear /rom this permanent agent, 
wherever they consent to listen to his itinerant declamation. 



28 

The next speech is that of Mr. Thome, of Kentucky, a student 
of the Lane Seminary, who, but that he is a boy, and may some 
time or other be a man, and repent of his folly and calumny 
too, we might be led to v^isit his windy eloquence with the rebuke 
it merits. Even his youthful indiscretion and puerility itself, 
however it may plead extenuation in his behalf, cannot never- 
theless excuse exaggeration and falsehood. Much less can the 
Society find justification, for endorsing the calumnies, which his 
fiery zeal in their cause led him to utter. If they were his friends, 
they owed it to this unfortunate and misguided youth, to suppress 
this his maiden speech, and suffer its vulgarity and obscenity to 
be speedily forgotten by the motley assemblage of blacks and 
whites, who were so shocked by its delivery. But by assuming 
this tirade of hyperbole as their own, the Society must bear the 
reproach it merits, and the scorn which every American, feels at 
its false and disgusting details. 

The principal portion of this protracted address is upon the 
liceiUioiisness of slavery, in all the loathsome details of which 
this young orator was perfectly " at home." And accordingly, 
he affirmed upon his own personal " knowledge," that " the slave 
states are Sodoms, and almost every village family a brothel !" 
and he added, " It is vjell ! God he blessed for the evils which 
this sin entails !" The following specimen of the universal licen- 
tiousness which he described as existing in the slave states, will 
show the hardihood and audacity of this juvenile, but experienced 
observer : — 

" Pollutioji, polbition ! Young men of talents and respecta- 
bility, fathers, professors of religion, ininisters — all classes ! 
Overwhelming pollution .'" and he adds, " I would not have you 
fail to understand that this is a general evil .'" Such an out- 
rage upon truth and upon decency, as is this infamous libel upon 
" all classes" in the slave states, has earned for its author, and 
those who now publicly assume the responsibility of the whole- 
sale slander, a perpetuity of infamy ; and ought to subject them 
to the moral frown of the whole American community. 

The details uttered by this calumniator, are too polluting to 
bear repetition. Indeed, this brazen young man, who seemed to 
glory in his own shame, after talking of " unblushing profliga- 
cy," "moral contamination," "indiscriminate debauchery," "cour- 
tezan feats," "overwhelming pollution," &.C., in the second edition 
of his speech, also printed in this pamphlet, gives evidence that 
even he seemed to have a moment's struggle with conscience, 
while he exclaimed, 

" / know an instance in the village where I live, that things 
were transacted which / cannot name before this assembly, in 



29 

the kitchen of a respectable family, and not an individual of the ' 
family knew of itP Indeed, he vindicated his fellow-citizens of 
Kentucky, by assuring the audience, that even they " did not 
know itr But he knew it from " personal knowledge !" What 
an experienced young man is this ! And if thus early in life, 
he knows the pollution in families, villages, and states, which no 
one else knew but himself, and knew it all by personal experi- 
ence too, who can contradict him? The audience who listened 
to the disgusting exhibition of himself, which this Mr. T. pre- 
sented, must have been vastly edified by the picture he drew of 
those scenes, in which it seems he bore so conspicuous a part. 
It was enough " to make one hide his head, and blush to own 
himself a man." 

But waving the shocking obtusity of moral sense in one so 
young, and the indelicacy and indiscretion of such an exhibition, 
all who know auy thing of the southern or western character, 
must be horrified at the recklessness of the outrag-e, which is 
here perpetrated upon " all classes" of the slave states, and the 
utter disregard of truth which characterizes the whole address. 
If this young man had any character to lose, it is forfeited for 
ever ; and having refused to retract, though called upon to do 
so, the false and offensive statements of his first speech, and re- 
peated them in his second ; he must endure the brand of a ca- 
lumniator, which the Rev. John Breckenbridge, another Ken- 
tuckian, has burned into his forehead. The Society in whose 
behalf he thus prostrated himself beyond recovery, have made 
that brand indelible, though they divide with him the unenvia- 
ble shame of its turpitude, by publishing his speeches in the pam- 
phlet before us. 

With the speech of the Rev. Beriah Green, which is next 
inserted, as it contains nothing but the stereotyped malignity 
and treason for which he has been so often and so justly rebuked, 
and which he has repeated so frequently, that it has almost ceased 
to be regarded, except as the ravings of a madman, it will not 
■ be necessary to be very critical. As usual, "prejudice," and the 
" cords of caste,''^ are the chief subjects of his railing, and he 
complains sadly of "those Pens into which vve thrust the co- 
loured people who choose to visit our houses of worship ;" for 
he thinks that according to the doctrines of the Report, there 
should be " no distinction of colour." Indeed he alleges, before 
we send the Gospel to the heathen abroad, we must show that 
Christianity makes an American believer receive his coloured 
" brother as his own mother's son," and of course a coloured 
sister, as his own mothers daughter, — but there is no amalga- 
mation here ! no intermarriages are intended ! Oh no ! ! 



30 

The Rev. Mr. Ludlow has just cause of complaint against the 
society for refusing to endorse his speech in all its length and 
breadth, though it was a very short one. He is here reported 
as having barely remarked that " this meeting was the funeral of 
colonization," whereas it is said by those who were present, that 
he " rang the funeral knell, sang the funeral dirge, stood upon 
the grave," and invited the congregation to raise a Te Deum, for, 
said he, " we are now attending the funeral of the American Colo- 
nization Society." It is said that it was among the most splendid 
efforts of his eloquence, and we must censure the society for sup- 
pressing it. 

The Rev. Dr. Cox, who followed, seemed to be overpowered 
by the " agonizing interest" of the funeral service, by his prede- 
cessor, and therefore said but little, reserving his strength for the 
adjourned meeting, and both speeches are here reported, the 
latter at length. In the first he said nothing worthy of remark, 
except that " he was prepared to maintain the ground, that it was 
a duty instantly to recognise the coloured man, as the Lord Jesus 
Christ recognised him." What kind of coloured man he referred 
to, he did not explain, and as he has since publicly maintained 
in the pulpit, and vindicated through the press, the sentiment 
that " Jesus Christ was himself a coloured m.aii^'' meaning as he 
explains it, an Asiatic, brown, or olive colour, we cannot hope to 
do him justice without an explanation oi term,Sj as he uses them,. 

The meeting was adjourned after a few words from William 
Lloyd Garrison, of the Liberator, and his imported coadjutor, 
Charles Stuart, neither of whom, nor what they said, deserve a 
single remark. Both of them are dipped in kindred gall, and 
neither can ever be sweetened; and as they have not originated or 
received a new idea for years, and are incapable of any other spirit 
than that of anti-colonizationists, we shall leave them, and pass 
on to notice a few of the speakers who occupied the adjourned 
meeting. 

The Rev. S. S. Jocelyn commenced the adjourned meeting by 
advocating a resolution, charging " the American church with 
the hlood of souls, with holding the keys of the great prison of 
oppression, with being herself enslaved^'' and such like rant and 
extravagance. It is a pity that so good a man as is Mr. J. should 
be found in such employment, and in such company. Were it 
not for his " bad advisers," he would never have introduced such 
a resolution, much less advocated it. Who made him a judge 
over " the American church ?" And how does he consent to call 
men " evangelical christians," who hold 300,000 slaves, according 
to his own showing 1 And still worse, he charges these " evan- 
gelical christians with inflicting a system of cruelty and oppres- 



31 

sion," and declares that their slaves are " uncultured in their 
minds — uninformed in their morals — and unprotected by the 
laws." Mr. J. has heard these stories and told them so often, 
that he absolutely believes them himself ! It would be idle to 
attempt a refutation of the fiction and poetry such as this, by 
which even 2:ood men are deceiving others, while themselves are 
deceived. We pass on to the address of Rev. Samuel J. May, 
on the " duty of the christians of the north, by christian means, to 
do all they can to procure immediate abolition." And here we 
remark, there are the most alarming and treasonable sentiments 
advanced and enforced by this minister of the gospel, which we 
recollect to have seen or read in the whole history of our country. 
A few examples will suffice to consign the author of this speech, 
and all who sanction it, to the just reprobation of every patriot 
and of every American christian, for this foul assault against 
our common country. 

After telling us in a strain of prophetic exultation, about "the 
bloody tragedy that must one day wind up this stupendous 
drama ;" and impiously declaring that in event of a " servile war,''^ 
the spirit we should then have to extinguish, would be " what, 
in our revolutionary fathers we call the noble spirit of liberty .'" 
he proceeds to speak with equal combustibility of the constitution 
of the United States in the following language : 

" Suppose the constitution did sanction slavery ? What then ? 
While there is a God in heaven, who regards mercy and equity, 
can we be bound by* any compacts of our onm, or any enact- 
ments of our fellow ivorms, to sin against Him?" And again, 

" I am every day grieved to hear so much said of the value of 
our union, and so little of the value of the approbation of God, 
as though his favour would be purchased too dear if it involved 
the interruption of a partnership in sin !" 

Here then we have an America)i and a clergyman too, at the 
anniversary of an Anierica^i society, denominating our " Union," 
^.partnership in sin, and talking of its "interruption" as necessary 
to the " approbation of God." If such be his estimate of our civil 
compact, it is no marvel that he is " every day grieved at hearing 
so much said of the value of our Union !" Nor need we wonder 
that he turns aside from his high vocation to vilify his country. 
Let the following foul slander of our institutions suffice to hold 
up this calumniator and traitor to the indignation of his country. 

" By the laws of our country, the slave is placed beyond the 
jtrotection of law !" 

This sentence is a falsehood of so deep a dye, that it is incredi- 
ble how any man who has a character to lose, would hazard that 
character by uttering, much less publishing it. And yet as it is 



38 

a stereotyped calumny of the party, and one of the " christian 
means" to procure " immediate abolition," it may be proper to 
remark in this place, that " the laws of the slave states provide 
for the protection of UJe^'' since the murder of a slave is punished 
with death ; to kill a slave is as much murder in contemplation 
of law, and enlightened public opinion, as to kill a freemen, and 
punishment is the same in both cases. The master who kills his 
slave is as obnoxious to the penalty of the law as any other per- 
son, and in fact more so. He is presumed to be guilty of the 
murder, if he reside on the plantation when one of his slaves is 
killed, until he can show the contrary by proof, or will purge 
himself by oath. And yet a professed christian minister insults 
heaven and earth, by affirming that " by the laws of our country, 
the slave is placed beyond the protection of laio .'" If this man 
belonged to any evangelical denomination of orthodox christians, 
he would be deposed from the sacred office, unless he could show 
that he was " invincibly ignorant." 

The laws also provide that when charged with capital crimes, 
or minor offences, the slaves are entitled to a. fair trial, and in 
the master's presence, that he may shield the innocent, and see 
that none are unlawfully condemned. The laws also restrain 
all unnecessary rigour in punishment, prohibit the labour of 
slaves being more than 14 hours in the 24, and the laws compel 
the master to furnish reasonable food and clothing to his slaves. 

The laws of the southern states also provide that slaves may 
attend at v)hatever church they choose, and secures to them all, 
the right of the Sabbath. For the protection of their morals, 
the law also removes the incentives to theft, by prohibiting tra- 
ding with the slaves, without the written permission of the mas- 
ter ; and protection against intemperance is also furnished, by 
the laws against selling or giving intoxicating liquors to 
slaves, without their master's consent. 

And yet Mr. Jocelyn says they are unprotected by the laws ! 
and Mr. M. tells us that by lav) they are placed beyond the pro- 
tection of the laiv, and the Report as well as speeches, are ever 
and anon repeating their lamentation over this stupid calumny. 
But we forbear. 

The next speaker, Rev. S. L. Pomeroy, in a highly inflamma- 
tory harangue, ranks the "slave holder, and the slave apologist," 
with " the murderer, the pirate, the midnight assassin^ the 
libertine, the traitor^'' and such like characters. And he 
glories in the fact of " the disturbance at the South," as owing 
to " our efforts, and our doctrines, our reproofs, our warnings," 
and says, " we are preaching anti-slavery at the South." We sup- 
pose the " disturbances at the South," of which he boasts as one 



33 

of the fruits of Anti-slavery " preaching," are such as the insurrec- 
tion and massacre of Southampton, for in proof that a salutary 
impression is made there, he says " Mr. Chairman, thousands of 
our fellow citizens of the south, will go to bed to-night with their 
loaded jnstols under their pillows, and their muskets over the 
mantel piece !" , 

And IS this a source of exultation? Can it be such, to any but 
a fiend, to have the consciousness of having contributed in the 
least to such a state of things ? How true that there are some men 
"whose glorying is in their shame!" 

He concludes his speech by a pathetic description of the hapless 
condition of the slaves, which so far as it is true is unexceptiona- 
ble. But as a specimen of the outrageous recklessness of truth, by 
which this minister is signalized, and it is only one of many, 
we quote from his account of the treatment of the slaves. 

" They have no priviles'es except what their masters please, 
to give them !" Is the Sabbath no privilege 1 Is going to any 
church they please, no privilege ? These they have secured by 
law, whether the master please or not, and Mr. P. knows it, 
for he says he has lived at the south. Again, " whatever is done 
to them, they have no redress." This is palpably false, as may 
be seen by a reference to the laws for their protection to which 
we have alluded ; and yet he adds, '■ The m.aster can do what 
he pleases with his slaves, and they cannot help themselves.''^ 
Suppose, for example, that the master pleases to neglect feeding 
and clothing his slaves, cannot they " help themselves ?" Sup- 
pose he pleases to make them work longer than the law allows, 
or to employ them on the Sabbath, or to require them to attend a 
particular church contrary to their inclination, can they not " help 
themselves ?" No man knows better than this Mr. P., that bad 
as slavery is, he has basely slandered the system and the laws of 
his country by which it is sustained. Such misrepresentations 
and exaggerations must originate in such a case from the unhal- 
lowed sentiment, that " the end sanctifies the meansP 

Mr. H. B. Stanton, of Lane Seminary, seems to exhaust all his 
eloquence in assailing the Colonization Society, by which he 
" means, all those who cherish expatriating sentiments in respect 
to the coloured people." He says, " the prejudice against the 
coloured people is vincible^'' while he alleges that the Colonization 
Society is founded on the doctrine that " prejudice is invincible?^ 
And yet he affirms that there is a " cruel public sentiment" and 
a " cruel prejudice" against the people of colour, in New York, 
in Maryland, and all " through the land,'''' and that this is identical 
with the desire for their expatriation. He represents this Coloniza- 
tion Society as " wielding the j)ublic sentiment,''^ and at the same 



' 34 

time " borne along liy it," and declares that not merely the clergy 
and the statesmen, the literati and the colleges, the press and the 
learned professions, the ecclesiastical authorities and the eighteen 
legislatures, are "at the bidding" of the Colonization Society ; but 
that this " IS the public sentiment of the nation, and 
may do what it jiicases" and yet with such a description of the 
universality of cruel " prejudice," and " cruel public sentiment" 
as is here given by himself, he prates about " prejudice vincible /" 
If the half of this vilification of our country were true, none but 
a madman could hope to be listened to, in his pretences to show 
that this " prejudice is vincible!" Indeed he sapiently exclaims, 
" Remove this prejudice, and the Colonization Society is dissolv- 
ed instantaneously !" Prodigious discovery ! It resembles that 
unlucky illustration of the Rev. Mr. Ludlow, in his suppressed 
speech, when he said that if all the negroes in the land could be 
miraculously converted into whites, in a single night, the Coloni- 
zation Society would be dissolved ! and thus he said he could 
" prove that the prepidice was only ski?i deep .'" We marvel 
that this speech of Mr. S. were not suppressed from this pamphlet, 
with Mr. L.'s funeral oration already alluded to, for it equals the 
latter in the attribute of stupidity, and deserved a kindred fate. 
The speech however was sustained in all its dark characteris- 
tics by a black man, who seconded it, and he falsely charged 
the Colonization Society with •' p7'oduci?ig enactments against 
co/oi/re(/5(?/«ooZs, and sustaining legislative provisions for thrusting 
the coloured people out of their native land." If the " Society 
were willing to hear this calumny, whose author's heart must be 
as black as his skin ; the " intelligent free coloured people'^ 
should not allow him to obtrude himself as their representative 
any where. There is however about as much truth in this, as 
in the rest of the didactic and dogmatical averments of the whole 
pamphlet. And perhaps this poor coloured man is not so much 
to blame as those who told him what to say. Li this case, he 
was in the same predicament with a certain Thomas C. Brown, 
who flourished at a late farce gotten up by the Anti-slavery men, 
and who having learned his lesson by rote, gave in his " testi- 
mony" secundum art em. When will the coloured people learn 
who are their true friends ? 

Having noticed already the supplement of Mr. Thome's speech, 
and "the kind and Christian spirit" it evinces according to the 
testimony of the Report, we will now briefly allude to the address 
of the Rev. Dr. Cox, which terminated this first Anniversary. The 
first thing he proposed to do, was to "emancipate the whites from 
prejudice f' And here he says, 

" I shall be met with the standing objection about amalgama- 



35 

tion. Will you encourage intermarriages between blacks and 
whites ?" What an opportunity here afforded itself for the Rev. 
Dr. clearly and explicitly to disavow the sentiment, and enter a 
public disclaimer if he did not hold it. But does he do any such 
thing? Where is his boasted candour and his " independent set of 
principles" now ? Reader ! are you not prepared to hear him 
say, " we utterly repudiate the sentiment, and purge ourselves of 
its enormity." Would you not look for a clear and distinct de- 
claration, that the amalgamation of the races by intermarriage 
was neither desired nor desirable, now that he had himself in- 
troduced the odious subject, in connexion with his stale rant 
about prejudice ? But what does he say ? Hark ! ^'-form/ypart, 
I cannot see that it has any thing to do vith the question P 
And after an illustration most disjointedly introduced about en- 
franchizing the Jews, when there can be no analogy in the cases, 
yet reasoning as though they were parallel, he asks, " Would not 
a single grain of common sense teach, that with the question of 
franchisement, the question of intermarriage has nothing at all 
to do. Let us do our duty, sir, and enfranchise our coloured 
jpeo/j/e according to their e97«aZ rights. And then ! if they rise 
in virtue and goodness, so as to command and deserve our re- 
spect, LET THEM HAVE IT ! I" It wiU probably be said that with 
the question of intermarriage this last sentence also has " no- 
thing to do" but the reader who perceives its* direct connexion 
will form his own conclusion. We think it manifests clearly 
that the Rev. Dr. has suffered a relapse of his old morbid theory, 
in renouncing which, he became a colonizationist, and which, it 
is said, he used to call his ^^ favourite plan for elevating the peo- 
ple of colour, at the Hijmeneal altar .'"* The greater obscurity 
of his expressions now, may be necessary on the ground of eis- 
pediency. 

The rest of Dr. C.'s speech is made up of his usual assault 
upon the Colonization Society, its impracticability and wicked- 
ness, without argument, or even the semblance of any thing but 
arrogant declamation ; together with the egotism by which he is 
so characterized in his intellectual and moral nature, that he is 
in this respect without parallel, and we fear beyond remedy. As, 

* This famous speech of Dr. Cox, cost a friend of ours six dollars, and as he 
says, was " paying for a dead horse." He had employed a reporter to attend 
the Colonization meeting at which this Reverend Doctor was to display his 
eloquence, and when the speech was taken down by the stenographer, and tran- 
scribed for the press, the grossness of the amalgamation doctrines it contained, 
although repudiated for the views of the Colonization Society, nevertheless, 
rendered it unfit for the public eye, and in mercy to him as well as to the socie- 
ty, the speech was suppressed. Perhaps a new edition of it may be expected, 
now that the author has resumed his favourite plan, or at least as soon as it is 
expedient. 



36 

however, in his past history, such a morbid paroxysm as that 
under which he now appears to labour, has, on some other sub- 
jects, had its termination ; we trust that in a lucid interval, on this 
subject, he may yet become again both useful and happy, for 
we doubt whether for some months past he has been either ; cer- 
tainly not to the extent that he otherwise would be. We shall, 
therefore, close our notice of this pamphlet without any farther 
reference to this misguided and erring brother, since he already 
occupies so unenviable a position before the public eye, as almost 
to disarm criticism. We wish him a safe and speedy deliverance 
from his " bad eminence." 

Having thus briefly noticed the Report and published speeches 
of this pamphlet, it may here be in place to refer to the character 
of this Anniversary meeting, in one particular which distinguish- 
ed it pre-eminently above every other held or loiown in this coun 
try, and we shall also briefly allude to some subsequent events. 

Let it be remembered, that it was held during the " Anniver- 
sary week," as it is called, in this city, a religious festival, annu- 
ally held in May. The American Bible Society, and other great 
religious institutions, celebrate their Anniversaries on the suc- 
cessive days of the week, and many hundreds of clerical and lay 
delegates from various parts of the country, are in attendance. 
For the present year, these several Societies had selected the 
Chatham-street Chapel, for their respective celebrations ; and in 
the arrangements for the occupancy of the building on the dif- 
ferent days of the week, this American Anti-Slavery Society had 
secured the house for Tuesday morning, which gave it a promi- 
nence among the events of the week, to which relatively and by 
priority, it was hardly entided. Stilly however, although some 
were disposed to be dissatisfied, none could justly complain of 
any violation of right, and the public, including those who were 
opposed to the Society and its relative position, entirely acqui- 
esced. 

When, however, the house began to fill up, and it was ob- 
served that very many coloured people, forsaking the separate 
place assigned to them in the house on all other occasions, be- 
gan to seat themselves promiscuously through the Chapel, some 
surprise was felt and expressed, Avhich was increased on its being 
announced from the pulpit, that the congregation would be seated 
without distinction of colour ; and a similar promiscuous invi- 
tation given to the seats on the platform, which was readily ac- 
cepted by the coloured people ; and the choir who were to perform 
the music of the occasion, were partly blacks and partly whites. 
These arrangements, obviously preconcerted, being entirely new 
in this region, produced some revulsion of feeling at the time; 



37 

nevertheless, the whole meeting proceeded to its termination 
without any serious interruption, and also the adjournment held 
at Dr. Lansing's church, although a similar mixture of colours 
was exhibited there, but to a less extent. This distinctive fea- 
ture of the meeting, as it was not at all necessary for the objects 
of the Society, we regretted at the time, regarding it as indis- 
creet, believing, as we did, that though the time may come, when 
such a course would be safe and judicious on such occasions, 
that time has not yet arrived. We thought it imprudent in so 
young a society, and broaching doctrines confessedly novel, thus 
to invite public odium, and hazard the success of their cause. 
Still however it was lawful, though it might be inexpedient ; for 
no one was obliged to go there, or to remain, if dissatisfied with 
the arrangements the Society chose to adopt for their own meet- 
ing. Hence we regarded any violent expression of disapproba- 
tion, as no ordinary outrage upon the rights of the Society, and 
the hitherto sacredness of the place, and one which ought not to be 
permitted or countenanced by any. None however was attempt 
ed, although hisses were occasionally heard when some of the 
most oifensive sentiments we have named were uttered ; but 
such interruptions occur in other public meetings, and though 
incapable of justification, yet they are generally connived at. 

That this preconcerted admixture of the audience, afibrding a 
practical illnstration of the equality " irrespective of complexion" 
which the Society contemplates, has been productive in subse- 
quent meetings of scenes .of disorder and even riot, can not ad- 
mit of a doubt. Indeed, it is more than probable, that but for 
this attempt, in the language of one of the Anti-Slavery bulletins, 
" to ACT OUT the sentiment, that God made of one blood all 
the families of the earth," the public tumult and disgraceful 
riots, which we all deplore, had never been engendered. And 
although we scarcely know how to express the mortification and 
indignation too, which these outrages upon personal, and even 
church property, have every where justly excited ; yet we be- 
lieve they had never occurred, but for this single cause ! 

" The cruel prejudice of caste," as it is called, existing, as it 
does, in the lowest classes of our white population, to a greater 
extent than any where else ; might naturally be expected to ope- 
rate upon the ignorant and depraved, by exciting the worst pas- 
sions, and prompting to deeds of violence such as those we have 
been compelled to witness in this city, and which required the 
strong arm of civil and military force to subdue. Such a result 
was feared by many, from the mixture at the Anniversaiy meet- 
ing ; and for that reason did nearly all the public presses dis- 
countenance, condemn, and even ridicule such motley assem- 



38 

blages. And but for the repetition of these amalgamation 
meetings, we speak solely now of their being seated promiscu- 
ously by the blacks and whites, we doubt whether the Annivei • 
sary would have excited the populace to any semblance of a riot. 
But again and again, in disregard of the private advice of the 
judicious, and the public rebukes of every daily paper in this 
city, this course, so odious and offensive as it was obviously be- 
coming, was almost nightly repeated ; and before any outrage 
had been committed, it became generally understood in the city, 
that an attempt was making in the session of the Cliatham-street 
Chapel, to introduce this mingling of colours in the ordinary 
meetings for worship. Already one or more dining parties had 
been given for whites and blacks promiscuously, and in several 
of the churches coloured persons had been introduced into the 
pews with white people, nolens volens. Then came the Fourth 
of July celebration, or rather desecration, in which the same 
offensive course was pursued ; and now, for the first time, there 
were symptoms of a riot. 

In fact, no sensible or discreet man can be found in the com- 
munity, unless among the infatuated partizans of the society, 
who does not regard the services on the 4th of July as a public 
outrage ; however he may condemn the scandalous conduct of 
the mob, which attempted to resent it by deeds of lawless violence, 
both at the time, and subsequently. When it is recollected that 
the day is one of hallowed memory, as the anniversary of our 
nation's birth, and kept as a political jubilee throughout the length 
and breadth of the land, what semblance of propriety can be dis- 
covered in first reading the Declaration of Independence ; and 
then, in most uncongenial proximity with that noble document, 
to introduce, as though of kindred character, that insignificant 
and treasonable production, entitled the " Declaration of the 
Anti-Slavery Convention." It is a political SIN to name these 
declarations in the same day, and especially to connect them to- 
gether, in the hallowed services of our country's Sabbath, as the 
4th of July ought to be regarded by every American. The fol- 
lowing extracts from this Anti-Slavery Declaration will serve to 
show both its insignificant and treasonable character. 

" We have met together for the achievement of an enter- 
prise, without which, that of our fathers is incomplete ! and 
which, for its magnitude, solemnity, and probable results 
upon the destiny of the world, as far transcends theirs ! as 
moral truth does physical force." 

" But those, for whose emancipation we are striving, — 



89 

constituting at the present time at least one sixth part of ouf 
countrymen, — are recognized by the law, and treated by their 
fellow-beings, as marketjible commodities — as goods and 
chattels — as hrute beasts ; are plundered daily of the fruits 
of their toil without redress ; really enjoying no constitutional 
nor legal 'protection from licentious and murderous outrages 
upon their persons : are ruthlessly torn asunder — the tender 
babe from the arms of its frantic mother — the heart-broken 
wife from her weeping husband — at the caprice or pleasure 
of irresponsible tyrants. For the crime of having a dark 
complexion, they suffer the pangs of hunger, the infliction of 
stripes, and the ignominy of brutal servitude. They are kept 
in heathenish darkness by laws expressly enacted to make 
their instruction a criminal offence." 

" These are the prominent circumstances in the condition 
of more than two millions of our people, the proof of which 
may be found in thousands of indisputable facts, and in the 
laws of the slave-holding States.'^ 

" Hence we maintain — that in view of the civil and reli- 
gious privileges of this nation, the guilt of its oppression is 
unequalled by a?iy other on the face of the earth .'" 

"It is piracy to buy or steal a native African, and subject 
him to servitude. Surely the sin is as great to enslave an 
American as an African !" 

" Therefore we believe and affirm — That there is no differ- 
ence, in principle, between the African slave trade and 
Am,erican slavery : 

" That every American citizen, who retains a human being 
in involuntary bondage as his property, is (according to 
Scripture) a man-stealer ! 

" That all those laios which are noio in force, admitting the 
right of slavery, are therefore before God utterly null and 
VOID ; being an audacious usurpation of the Divine prero- 
gative, a daring infringement on the law of Nature, a base 
overthrow of the very foundations of the social compact, a 
complete extinction of all the relations, endearments, and 
obligations of mankind, and a presumptuous transgression of 
all the holy commandments — and that therefore they ought 
to be instantly abrogated." 



40 

" We regard, as delusive, cruel, and dangerous, any scheme 
of expatriation which -pretends to aid, either directly or 
indirectly, in the emancipation of the slaves, or to be a sub- 
stitute for the immediate and total abolition of slavery." 

" But we maintain that Congress has a right, and is 
solemnly hound, to suppress the domestic slave trade between 
the several States, and to abolish slavery in those portions of 
our territory which the Constitution has placed under its 
exclusive jurisdiction. 

" We also maintain that there are, at the present time, the 
highest obligations resting upon the people of the free States, 
to remove slavery by moral and political action, as prescribed 
in the Constitution of the United States." 

"They seize the slave who has escaped into their terri- 
tories, and send him back td be tortured by an enraged 
master or a brutal driver. This relation to slavery is crimi- 
nal and full of danger : it must he broken up .'" 

" We shall organize Anti-Slavery Societies, if possible, in 
every city, town, and village in our land." 

" We shall spare no exertions nor means to bring the 
whole nation to speedy repentance. 

" Our trust for victory is solely in GIOD. We may be 
personally defeated, but our principles tiever .^" 

The foregoing extracts from this sophistical, dangerous, and 
Anti- American document, are thus presented to the reader, that 
he may appreciate the desecration of the day of which the socie- 
ty were guilty in presuming to read such sentiments, in con- 
nexion with the Declaration of American Independence: and 
that no American may be surprised, that the audience refused to 
hear David Paul Brown, Esq., of Pliiladelphia, who purposed to 
pronounce an oration after the reading of that offensive docu- 
ment. And when it is remembered that the audience was made 
up of all colours, and hundreds of our black population taught 
to depreciate our national Declaration of Independcnco, and that 
this anti-slavery declaration "far transcends" it ; could it be ex- 
pected that on such a day, an American audience would restrain 
their indignation. All that was done then, was to prevent the 
delivery of the oration in the most peaceable and effectual man- 
ner, and the motley assemblage was dismissed in confusion, 
while the orator was sent home with his unspoken speech in his 
pocket. 



41 

Still, however, no considerable violence was done to persons 
or property, although the oirensive meetings and Anti- American 
speeches and publications were continued, in defiance of the tone 
of remonstrance and rebuke which became louder and louder. 
Among the most offensive publications, and perhaps one of the 
prominent causes of the subsequent disturbances of the public 
peace, was a handbill posted through the city, directly inviting 
resistance to the laws, and calculated to rouse the black popula- 
tion to the rescue of some fugitive slaves who were in custody 
at the suit of their owner, until legal investigation should deter- 
mine the issue. These handbills bore the motto, '-Resistance 
TO TYRANTS, IS OBEDIENCE TO GoD !" Nor was It, uutil the 
subsequent repetition of similar provocations, by an attempted 
African celebration, and a controversy occurring in relation to 
the occupancy of that ill-fated building, the Chatham- street Chapel, 
in which several white men were violently assaulted and beaten 
by the blacks, that the infuriated populace resented the oft re- 
peated and continued series of such proceedings, by taking the 
law in their own hands, and inflicting violence upon the proper- 
ty of some of the leaders of the party. Once excited, they were 
driven to madness, and in their desperation several churches, 
which had been used for anti-slavery purposes, were stoned and 
otherwise injured, and many of the coloured people suffered in 
their property and their churches. Those citizens who were 
conspicuous in the anti-slavery ranks had to flee the city, and 
the civil and military authorities had to interpose for the 
suppression of the riots, and the protection of the peace of the 
city. 

Surely every citizen must feel a personal degradation in these 
shameful outrages, which nothing can justify, nor even excuse. 
However exceptionable and even offensive were the meetings of 
the Anti-slavery Society, however dangerous their principles and 
mischievous their tendency, yet in a government of laws, the liberty 
of speech and of the press belongs to every citizen, subject only 
to the restraints and penalties of the law. Any combination de- 
signed by brute force to inflict summary vengeance by a band 
of outlaws, is to be deprecated as an infinitely greater evil, than 
the causes which are made the pretext of such enormities. And 
accordingly, the perpetrators of these deeds of violence, who 
were arrested in the act, have been already subjected to the pe- 
nalties of the violated law ; and a lesson has been thus taught to 
those who have escaped detection, which will doubtless deter 
them from a repetition of such offences. 

It is a venerated maxim, that " freedom of opinion may be 
safely tolerated on any subject, while reason is left free to con>- 
6 



42 

bat it." And with reference to the doctrmes and measures of 
the Anti-slavery Society, no force is needed but the power of 
truth. We have animadverted freely upon their official publi- 
cations, believing, as we do, that they contain sentiments which 
are dangerous to our country in its political, social, and religious 
relations ; and, as we have a right to do, we liave attempted to 
prove that in their zeal for abstract principles, they have com- 
mitted violence upon the majesty of truth. The public mea- 
sures they propose are legitimately subject to criticism, as are 
also all the arguments and means they use to propagate their 
doctrines. 

In exposing the errors they have committed, in detecting the 
misrepresentations and falsehoods into which they have fallen, 
and in warning our countrymen of the mischievous and danger- 
ous tendency of this society, which we regard as an Anti- Ame- 
rican conspiracy against human rights and human liberty ; we 
have aimed to do no injustice to the society, or to individuals ; 
while at the same time we have fearlessly expressed our senti- 
ments, with the warmth and earnestness which our convictions 
of truth and duty inspire. And now, in conclusion, we submit 
to the people of the United States the opinions we entertain on 
this important subject, with the reasons on which those opinions 
are founded, which though briefly expressed, are, we hope, suffi- 
ciently intelligible. It remains for every American citizen to 
form his own conclusions as respects his individual duty, whether 
to favour the doctrine of immediate abolition as a remedy for 
slavery, without regard to consequences ; or to withhold from 
the Anti-Slavery Society any countenance or patronage. And 
in the event of the latter conclusion being adopted, as Americans 
and as Christians, we present to them the American Colonization 
Society, as being strictly national in its character ; supremely be- 
nevolent in its designs ; wholly peaceable in its measures ; and 
unexceptionable in" its tendency; — whether viewed as the only 
safe and practicable method of promoting the abolition of slavery 
in this country; or as a plan for the elevation of the coloured 
race in the land of their forefathers, where the God of nature de 
signed them to be the lords of the soil ; or as a means of intro- 
ducing the lights of Christianity and kindling the fires of civili- 
zation upon that continent of heathenism. 

While on the other hand, we think that we have shown, that 
the " American Anti-Slavery Society" is both Anti- American and 
Anti-Christian in its nature and tendency ; — that it is wild, vi- 
sionary, and Utopian, in proposing to elevate to equality with the 
whites, a race so long oppressed, degraded, and down-trodden in 
the dust ;— that their schemes and plans are treasonable in their 



43 

character, involving the overthrow of our civil institutions, and 
the dissolution of our national compact ; — that they are utterly 
impracticable, because at war with the laws of the land, as well 
as with a repugnance deep, universal, and invincible ; that 
the means they employ are calculated to engender civil strife, 
servile war, insurrection, and bloodshed, and already threaten to 
desolate the hopes, and blast the rising glory of our common 
country. And while we acquit the originators and promoters of 
the society of any motive thus to inflict untold evils upon their 
country, and award to them all that disinterestedness they claim ; 
yet this does not diminish the danger to be apprehended from 
their doctrines and measures, nor release us from the responsibi- 
lity of exposing their errors, correcting their mistakes, and, if we 
may, of preventing their mischiefs. And if in defeating their 
misguided efforts, it becomes necessary to encounter the men 
who make them, we may do this, as we have aimed to do, with- 
out using carnal weapons, and without feeling any personal ran- 
cour or hostility against their persons. We have to do with 
" principles, not men ;" and whether we have succeeded in over- 
throwing those on which the Anti-slavery fabric is built, is of 
vastly more importance, than whether the individuals advoca- 
ting those principles are treated with more or less severity than 
they merit. 

The following important conclusions, are those to which the 
author would fain hope that this review may lead the minds of 
his readers, if, as he humbly conceives, he has established their 
justice and propriety, viz. :— 

1st. The American Anti-slavery Society, is so called by a 
misnomer, since its name and character are ahke ^Iw^i- American. 

2d. In the 2d article of its constitution, the society audaciously 
usurps the supreme legislative, judicial, and executive authority 
of this nation, in declaring the exercise of the legally constituted 
right of slave-holding, to be a ^'■heinous crime in the sight of 
God^^ thus presuming to decide, in the language of their famous 
"Declaration," that "all those laws which are now in force ad- 
mitting the right of slavery, are therefore, before God, utterly 
null and void .'" which is equivalent to an afiirmation that nul- 
lificatiofi would be a virtue " before God," and rebellion on the 
part of the slaves, a Christian duty ! 

3d. The measures proposed for the removal of the natural re- 
pugnance between the races, which is called prejudice, aiming 
at the elevation of the coloured population to political and do 



44 

mestic " equality with the whites," in " all our happy institu 
tions" which are " open to others !" and avowing a purpose to ef- 
fect this elevation while i\\e,y remain among us ; necessarily in- 
cludes an incorporation of the races by the most offensive form 
of amalgamation, however such design may be disavowed. 

4th. That to attempt to brand the characters of any portion of 
our fellow citizens with the crimes of robbery, jyiracy^ and mur- 
der^ for an act recognized as a civil right by the Constitution of 
the Union, and the uninterrupted possession and exercise of 
which, is guarantied by the laws of the land, is, in itself, virtual 
treason before God and man; and must inevitably tend to disaf- 
fect the independent sovereignties of tliese states, alienate the 
affections of southern Christians from their brethren, unsettle 
the foundations of our Union, and involve this nation in the hor- 
rors of a civil rebellion, if not in the bloody tragedy of a servile 
war ! 

5th. That the attempt to propagate such doctrines in any part 
of this Union, by the agency of^^ foreign emissaries, and especi- 
ally the inculcation of such sentiments under the garb of our 
holy religion, as though countenanced by its divine precepts is 
a high and grievous offence, alike against patriotism and Chris- 
tianity ; and ought to be every where peaceably, but steadily and 
effi.ciently, opposed by every lover of his country, and especially 
by every friend of our common Christianity, 

6th. That the abolition of slavery from this land, depending, 
as it does, according to the Constitution, solely upon the will of 
the Sonth, and the voluntary action of southern legislatures, all 
interference, or even the semblance of dictation, on the part of 
individuals in the North, and especially by an organized body of 
citizens in any of the free states, is to be deprecated as a public 
calamity. Experience demonstrates that it cannot fail to retard, 
if it does not utterly prevent the extinguishment of slavery in the 
country, while such an organization must inflict vmutterable 
mischiefs upon the coloured people themselves, whether free or 
enslaved. 

7th. \.s therefore the tendencies of this " American Anti- 
Slavery Society" and its publications, are now so apparent, and 
its brief history has exhibited no other results than inflaming the 
public mind ; increasing the prejndice which it ])rofesses to 
remove ; magnifying the evils of slavery by provoking to rigorous 
enactments, and individual severities ; diminishing the brighten- 
ing prospects of the cause of emancipation, and overthrowing the 



45 

hopes of Its friends ; it is plain that " tlie duty, interests, and 
safety of all concerned, require its immediate abandonment." 

8th. That even on the supposition that the cause of abolition 
in the slave states, might be promoted by any moral efforts made 
at the North, the heads and hearts of those who have been 
engaged in this American Anti-Slavery Society, are demonstrably 
unfit to participate in a cause, upon which their rash impetuosity 
and intemperate declamation has already inflicted so deep a 
wound. If therefore any thing can be done in the free states, to 
aid our southern brethren to "break every yoke, and let the 
oppressed go free ;" it is now certain that these are not the men, 
nor theirs the means for such an enterprise. 

9th. That the abolition of slavery, and the elevation of our 
coloured population, are objects so vast in extent and importance, 
that nothing can be done in the promotion of either by sudden, 
rash, or violent means ; but must be peacefully attempted, and if 
ever attained, it must be by gradual efforts, consistent with 
the public sentiment and clearly compatible with the public 
safety. 

10th. That the American Colonization Society is, therefore, 
strictly speaking, the only "American Anti-Slavery Society^' in 
existence, for while it disclaims all interference with vested or 
constitutional rights, and proposes a direct action, only upon the 
"free people of colour," and this, only " with their own consent ;" it 
does nevertheless promote and encourage the voluntary emanci- 
pation of the slaves to an extent, unequalled in the whole history 
of abolition societies, and without a parallel in ancient or mo- 
dern times. 

If these conclusions, thus briefly enumerated, be legitimately 
drawn from the present examination of the pamphlet under 
notice, and it appears to the author, that no sophistry can evade 
them, the whole is respectfully submitted to American citizens, 
and American Christians, witli the fervent desire that it may be 
useful at the present^ crisis, and subserve the interests of patriot- 
ism, philanthropy, and religion, which maybe justly regarded as 
strictly identical. 

FINIS. 



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